Workplace Incivility: How Should Employees and Managers Respond?

Abstract

What do you do when you are distressed by the rude behavior of an ill-mannered co-worker or boss? If your answer is much, you are in good company. Few workers actually take action to address uncivil behavior in the work place. Why do so many workers choose to suffer the slings and arrows of workplace incivility rather than take any formal steps to stop it? Perhaps the answer is that while workplace incivility is dis turbing, workers don't find it serious enough to warrant formal actions such as complaining to a superior. But is ignoring incivility in the work place wise? Fortunately, new research by Lilia M. Cortina of the University of Michigan and Vicki J. Magley of the University of Connecticut addresses this topic. In essence, their research shows that the consequences for workers who face daily doses of workplace incivility are not insignificant. When employees are subjected to co-workers or bosses who yell and swear, make them the object of mean jokes, or intentionally exclude them from cama raderie-building activities, their morale and per formance tend to suffer. More specifically, Cortina and Magley explain that employees who are the targets of workplace incivility are likely to experience stress, distrac tion, and negative emotions as well as lower job satisfaction and sometimes even reduced creativ ity. Given these stakes, management needs to develop a better understanding of how employees experience and respond to workplace incivility. To investigate this, Cortina and Magley ana lyzed the results of surveys they administered to three different workplace samples. One sample included more than 1,700 university employees, the second included more than 4,000 attorneys, and the third included more than 1,100 federal court employees. The surveys assessed the types of workplace incivility respondents experienced, how they perceived the uncivil behavior (e.g., offensive? annoying? embarrassing? threat ening? etc.), and how they chose to cope with it. The university employees were asked to assess the workplace incivility they had experienced over the prior year; the attorneys and federal court employees had an expanded time frame of the prior five years. Overall, employees who faced workplace inci vility tended to feel frustrated, annoyed, and, to a lesser extent, offended. Few employees reported that they felt particularly threatened by these in cidents; they felt negative emotions rather than fear or threat. This differentiates workplace incivil ity from other, more severe forms of antisocial be havior in the workplace, such as sexual harassment or bullying. As a matter of fact, the sometimes subtle nature of workplace incivility and its consequences (i.e., hurt feelings may escape notice) makes it harder to investigate than more blatant types of antisocial behavior (e.g., bullying). Overall, how employees felt about the incivil ity depended on its duration and variety and the power of the instigator. In other words, incivility that lasted for a long period of time and included a variety of negative behaviors was experienced as more stressful than isolated incidents involving repeated, predictable behaviors. And incivility ap pears to be more stressful when it comes from above (e.g., a supervisor) versus from a peer. Es sentially, the most stress-inducing instigator of workplace incivility is a boss who displays a wide variety of rude behaviors that he or she unleashes on subordinates regularly. Naturally, due to fears of retaliation, employees find it much harder to protest the uncivilized conduct of superiors than that of peers.